[Peace-discuss] D-Day

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Didn't want the D-Day anniversary to get by without making a point that
we've made several times on News from Neptune.  --CGE]

	D-Day 60 Years Later
	Was It Really Worth the Carnage?
	By CounterPunch Wire

Sixty years after D-Day, the U.S. Establishment has apparently still not
yet withdrawn all its troops from the European continent. Yet a book that
Graham Lyons edited, The Russian Version of the Second World War,
presented an alternative version of what happened 60 years ago in Western
Europe:

"In June 1944, when it had become obvious that the Soviet Union was
capable of defeating Hitler's Germany with her forces alone, England and
the USA opened the Second Front.

"On 6 June the Allied forces, commanded by General Eisenhower, landed in
Normandy. The Anglo-American forces...advanced into the heart of France...

"...The Germans had diverted only 60 divisions on the Western front, while
the Hitler command maintained 259 divisiions and brigades on the
Soviet-German front..."

According to The French Resistance: 1940 to 1944 by Frida Knight, during
the days and weeks after D-Day in France, "towns and villages" in Normandy
were "mercilessly bombed by the Allied planes" and around the city of Caen
"Allied Command ordered air-raids almost as cruel as those on Germany." As
a result, according to the same book, "hundreds died and thousands lost
their homes," and "when the Canadian division finally entered and
`liberated' Caen there was little left of the town" and "the population
had declined from 32,000 to 12,000."

The French Resistance book also asserted that "in Le Havre, the last
Norman town to be freed, where 1,500 tons of high explosives were dropped
in two hours...there were between 2,000 and 3,000 dead, while 35,000 were
completely bombed out of 10,500 homes" and "it is now recognized but not
always admitted that had the Allies understood the role of the French
Resistance and incorporated its forces into their plans there would have
been no need for the raids with their tolls of tragedy and harvest of
bitterness..."

U.S. military casualties on D-Day included 1,465 killed, 3,184 wounded and
1,928 missing, according to The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan.

	***